Another slightly smaller than usual Week in Parliament this week, with Scotland and Wales being out until after their elections. Little of immediate interest from Northern Ireland too this week, so we rely on Westminster to provide.

There have been many great conflicts over the years. The ancient Greeks fought the Trojans in a clash of civilisations caused by the doomed love affair of Paris and Helen. The Hundred Years’ war raged and slowed for 116 years, making its common moniker of questionable accuracy. The English and American Civil Wars pitted brother against brother in devastating conflicts which have resonated through the centuries. I fear this week we may have another to be added to that canon. Ian Liddell-Grainger, Conservative MP for Bridgwater and West Somerset v Somerset County Council.

It is not unusual for MPs to air their grievances against local authorities in the House. Most often it occurs where an MP has a Council run by an opposing party in their constituency, Elliot Colburn MP for Carshalton and Wallington has a long-running dispute with his local council for example. One of the things that makes Mr Liddell-Grainger’s more interesting is that Somerset County Council is a solidly Tory Council. So what has caused the disquiet? Somerset County Council is currently seeking unitary authority status from the Government a process which, amongst many other things requires a consultation. It is this consultation that is causing the furore, so I thought today that I would have a little look at it to see if Mr Liddell-Grainger’s protests are well founded.

The consultation itself is fairly broad, considering unitarisation proposals in three separate areas (Cumbria, North Yorkshire and Somerset), in all cases looking at multiple different options supplied by various levels of the local authorities. All three are brought together under one consultation document, with three separate questionnaires available. It has run for eight weeks and closed on Monday.

The central consultation document brings together the principles and process for the creation of unitary authorities, detailing the information needed and how the Secretary of State will consider the applications. Six questions are asked, covering general topics of support for proposals, the likelihood of improvement to local services and whether the proposed geographies covered are appropriate. The questions seem mostly reasonable, an argument might be possible for a little more detail, but the questions as asked should provide all the information required for the decision maker. Multiple response formats are provided, the links to online forms, an e-mail address and an address for written responses.

So how does it stack up? Well broadly as we’d expect. From a management perspective it might be slightly better to have three separate consultation documents, one for each of the regions, even if they did end up replicating much of the same information. The structure of the webpage is perhaps not quite perfectly designed, there is some repetition, but nothing particularly sinful. If we were to nitpick, we might want to see it running a little longer than eight weeks, but given the nature of the consultation eight weeks should be sufficient.

Mr Liddell-Grainger’s primary complaint seems to be that in theory anyone in the world could log on to take part in the consultation, and that it was not restricted to the people of Somerset. In one of his addresses to the House he described it as ‘pathetic’ and (jokingly, one presumes) said it was open for “Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong-Un, and any other tinpot dictator” to take part in. His preferred option is for a local referendum to take part, which some of the local District Councils have already planned.

It is, I think, the first time that we have seen concerns that people from outside an area might significantly influence a consultation be raised in the House, certainly in such a dramatic manner. The primary problem for this argument might be that a consultation is required by both statute and policy, whereas a referendum is not. But all may not quite be lost. The consultation document does highlight the criteria by which proposals will be considered, and includes remarks that respondents are expected to comment “only on the proposals affecting their area”, and that one of the primary concerns is looking at whether proposals “command a good deal of local support”.

We’ve never had a case (legal or otherwise) looking at circumstances where consultations have been responded to by people from outside their geographic area, but it seems likely that the terms stated above in the consultation document would be considered a legitimate qualification of how responses would be considered. If you’re responding to one of the consultations without being local, then although you would still expect your response to be ‘conscientiously considered’, you might expect it to be given less weight than that of a doughty- ah, there doesn’t seem to be a widely accepted demonym for someone from Somerset. A doughty person from Somerset.

We’ll keep an eye on the results of this consultation, and have a look at any local referendum that emerges from the District Councils (though I note that Mr Liddell-Grainger said that the SoS had written a letter encouraging them not to hold it). For now though, the question of Somerset must remain open.